New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Django Django today release a new video for the futuristic club track "Don't Touch That Dial" ft. Yuuko, the lead cut from Off Planet - Part 2. The retro-inspired video explores striking synthwave aesthetics that feature an alternate-universe simulacrum of Japanese rapper Yuuko in a vibrant TV screen of color. The single, which
Clash called "superb alt-pop", describes a typical day in the life where there's only one rule… Don't Touch That Dial. Off Planet - Part 2 also arrived with other standout tracks "Back to Back" ft. Patience, as well as "Squid Inc", "Come Down" and "Golden Cross".
About "Don't Touch That Dial" ft. Yuuko, Maclean, said: "This was a weird instrumental track that came out of looping some little chopped up bits of a studio jam. I liked the odd groove of the track and I wanted a vocalist on there but I wanted something quite different, so I reached out to Yuuko and she totally got it, and delivered this outstanding top line."
"Don't Touch That Dial" follows the release of the album's Part 1 and the BBC 6
Music A-Listed single, "Complete Me" feat. Self Esteem. An explosion of 90's inspired breakbeat, packed with organs, pianos and synth strings, the track makes Rebecca Lucy Taylor's hooks completely irresistible, as if echoing from some familiar memory. A longtime associate of the band, Self Esteem released her first EP on Dave's Kick + Clap label, appearing on 2018's Marble Skies and supporting the Djangos on tour. The track was described by
Clash as "a dazzling piece of synth pop", while NME took notice of the "clubby piano, synth strings and keys." Watch the accompanying animated video, taking inspiration from acid rave and 90s TV channel logo stings, directed by the illustrator Ed Croucher, here.
Off Planet, an album released in four parts, each as a separate "planet", features a cavalcade of mainstream and underground stars - Self Esteem, Jack Peñate, Stealing Sheep, Toya Delazy and many more, all of them either friends of the band or personally sought out by Dave Maclean, bringing entirely new creative angles into play. From bluesy pop and Middle Eastern cabaret goth to Afro acid and piano rave, to call it kaleidoscopic is putting it mildly. Despite smashing the Django Django mould and at times not sounding like anything on their previous releases, Off Planet is very much still recognisably them, and is the biggest, boldest, and most varied statement the band has ever made.
In the UK, Django Django will play five instores this June to coincide with the release of Off Planet. The band will also perform at this year's Meltdown Festival curated by Christine and the Queens, as well as at Kite, Bluedot and Standon
Calling festivals.
Dates are as follows:
06/09 - London, UK @ Southbank Centre, Christine and the Queens' Meltdown Festival
06/11 - Oxfordshire, UK @ Kite Festival
06/16 - London, UK @ Rough Trade East - instore
06/19 - Bristol, UK @ Rough Trade Records - instore
06/20 - Liverpool, UK @ Jacaranda Records Phase One - instore
06/21 - Nottingham, UK @ Rough Trade - instore
06/22 - Kingston Upon Thames, UK @ Pryzm - instore
07/20 - 07/23 - Macclesfield, UK @ Bluedot Festival
07/20 - 07/23 - Standon, UK @ Standon Calling
Off Planet - full album
16 June 2023 via Because Music
Full album tracklist:
Wishbone
Complete Me ft. Self Esteem
Osaka
Hands High ft Refound*
Lunar Vibrations ft Isabelle Woodhouse
Don't Touch That Dial ft. Yuuko
Back to Back ft. Patience
Squid Inc
Come Down
Golden Cross
No Time ft. Jack Penate
A New Way Through
Galaxy Mood ft. Toya Delazy
The Oh Zone
Dead Machine ft. Stealing Sheep
Dumb Drum
Fluxus
Slipstream
Who You Know ft. Bernardo
Black Cadillac
Gazelle
Off Planet Part 2
Part 2 tracklist:
1. Don't Touch That Dial ft. Yuuko
2. Back to Back ft. Patience
3. Squid Inc
4. Come Down
5. Golden Cross
Django Django began with, and remain driven by, the core of Dundee-born Dave and
Vincent Neff from Derry, Northern Ireland, who met at Edinburgh school of art. Dave was, and is, an obsessive music collector who started DJing spacey jungle / drum'n'bass and then played and produced all kinds of electronic and experimental grooves from dancehall to krautrock and library music, but with a solid heart of raw American house and techno.
Vinny meanwhile had grown up on rave and indie from his older sisters and was finding his own voice as a singer-songwriter. On moving to London they began making tracks together - Vinny's songs and Dave's arrangements - but it quickly blurred with both writing and structuring songs. Vinny's natural facility with writing harmonies became a key part of the sound, and with the addition of keyboardist Tommy
Grace and bassist Jimmy Dixon, they became the fully-fledged band that has carried on to today.
Off Planet, the band's fifth album, began with Dave's beats. Throughout lockdown and the surrounding period he had been super prolific, returning to his DJ roots and making standalone dance tracks - and at the start of the album process they went back to the original core pattern of
Vinny writing over these beats ("fast and furious because he was making them faster than I could process them!"). Initially Dave was also making a lot of instrumental electronic tracks "very specifically to be not Django Django", but as the writing process went on and tunes were passed to Tommy and Jimmy to write parts for, the idea of having a whole load of guests crystallised, and in fact Dave's more ravey or hip-hop beats suddenly made sense when they imagined different voices on them and reaching out to friends or, in one case, just googling "Japanese rapper" (Yuuko). Just as the Django sound had evolved in the first instance from Dave's immersion in club culture and Vinny's songwriting, to become fully formed as they became a band, so the process was repeated on this album, albeit with grander ambition and a whole lot more participants.
From some 50 initial sketches on Dave's original beats, the shape of the four "planets" began to become clear, and so did the songs, and during a week playing and recording together in the Scottish countryside at Dave's family home in Polbain in the far northwest, it all became "Djangofied". Off Planet remains fully functional as four separate "planets", but the full rocket ride around them all is, incredibly, an even more coherent and enjoyable experience.
Flowing through all of this is the emergent sense of cosmic wonder: as Dave puts it, "just about everything we love, whether that's old psychedelia or
Detroit techno, has that futuristic or outer space feel, and I think we can't help putting that into what we do." The term Off Planet comes from Dave's obsession with ufology: it's a term for hyper-advanced technologies kept secret from the populace. And perhaps that natural sense of the scale and potential of music and art as a technology itself is what has allowed them to very naturally align all their planets, to make sense and coherence from the ludicrous palette of colours they presented themselves with.
Whatever it was, it worked, and whether you take Off Planet one part at a time or all at once, you're immediately taken into the Django's universe.
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